Sausalito Reopens Park to Public - Vina del Mar a symbol of city's mixed feelings on tourism- Nov 29, 1996 - San Francisco Chronicle - By Carl Nolte

Sausalito Reopens Park to Public
Vina del Mar a symbol of city's mixed feelings on tourism
Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, November 29, 1996

For the first time in more than 30 years, the public will be allowed inside Sausalito's Vina del Mar Park, a small jewel of a place that has come to symbolize the town's schizophrenic attitude toward tourists.

The park will reopen December 12, the first step in giving the center of town a new look. Eventually there will be a plaza near the San Francisco ferry landing and a promenade with artists' kiosks, all part of a plan to make Sausalito more ``user-friendly.''

Which means, of course, more attractive to its residents -- and to tourists.

Vina del Mar is a beautiful little park with immaculate green lawns, flower gardens, palm trees and a splendid fountain, all guarded by two cement elephants from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco.

The sign says it all: ``This historic park is for your viewing pleasure. Please do not enter.''

Back in the good old days, anyone could go into the park. But in the '60s, to the horror of the town's civic leaders, everyone did. It became a haven for hippies, who, shocked people said, hung out, smoked dope, dropped acid, played guitars and did other awful things.

A fence went up and the park was closed to the public. In the '70s, it was named for Vina del Mar, Sausalito's sister city in Chile, but it stayed locked up. The enemy at that time, according to local newspaper accounts, was ``hordes of seasonal visitors.'' In other words, tourists.

Sausalito has always been ambivalent about tour-

ists. On the one hand, their money helps pay the rent and generates sales taxes. On the other, they take over downtown. Bridgeway, the main street, is impassable on weekends, and parking is impossible. It is like living in a postcard.

It seemed to be a rule: Tourists and Sausalito people did not mix.

Sausalito loves festivals, and invites everyone to its annual Art Festival on Labor Day. But the best Sausalito festivals are carefully kept secrets: parades down Caledonia Street for the Portuguese Holy Ghost Festival, for Easter, for the Fourth of July and for Halloween. These are for locals only and are never advertised outside of town. A couple of years ago, Caledonia Street was even excised from maps given to tourists.

``Caledonia Street is ours,'' said Patrick Moloney, who lives in the north end of town. ``It's not for tourists.'' Like many Sausalito residents, he seldom goes to the center of town, which is lined with boutiques and souvenir shops.

But times have changed. Vice Mayor George Stratigos, elected this spring with the slogan ``Born and Raised. Knows and Cares,'' believes it is time for something different.

``When Sausalito people travel, they become tourists themselves and spend a lot of time looking for small villages, just like Sausalito,'' he said. He can't understand why Sausalito residents would ignore visitors when they come to their hometown.

Reopening the park, he thinks, will allow locals and tourists to mix, sit down in the same park and talk.

Not everybody feels this way. Some think the carefully tended park will be trampled. Some are not sure. ``My mother is worried,'' said Randy Archer, who has lived in Sausalito all his life. ``I myself am glad it is being reopened. I went here as a kid. But Sausalito is turning into another San Francisco, you know, with all kinds of people, and now we have beggars, too, like the city. Maybe they'll be in the park. So I have mixed feelings.''

Lauren Gonzales, another lifelong resident, is sure of what she wants. She campaigned to open the park in 1974, when she was 11 and in the sixth grade. ``Without this park,'' she told the City Council, ``There will be no joy in children's eyes.''

She was turned down then, but last month, the council voted to reopen the park -- and Gonzales, who now has one son, three stepchildren and another child on the way, is delighted. ``The best thing about it,'' she said, ``is my kids get to enjoy this park.''

Maritime buffs work to save last steam schooner- San Francisco Examiner - November 25, 1996- by Donna Horowitz

Maritime buffs work to save last steam schooner
Donna Horowitz, SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER

Monday, November 25, 1996

Private committee will try to keep the Wapama from being demolished

SAUSALITO - Fearing a piece of history will be lost forever, two maritime buffs have come to the aid of the world's last wooden steam schooner.

The 215-foot Wapama, which once carried lumber and passengers along the Pacific Coast, has been slated for demolition by the U.S. Park Service.

Since learning of the ship's fate, Ed Zelinsky, a major downtown Tiburon property owner and history enthusiast, and retired Rear Adm. Thomas Patterson have formed a committee to save the Wapama, which has been sitting on a barge in Sausalito for the last 10 years.

"We're a maritime nation. We're surrounded by water," Paterson said. "We came from the sea. We can't let our ships disappear one by one."

For the last several months the two men have been drumming up support for the ship among sailors' unions, maritime historical groups, politicians - and even royalty.

Zelinsky made his case to Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace in London several weeks ago at a gathering of the World Ship Trust, a preservation group on which Zelinksy serves as vice president.

Zelinsky, who is also a member of the National Maritime Museum Association in San Francisco and vice chairman of the National Maritime Historical Society in New York, is adamant that the Wapama not be destroyed.

"It's the only wooden lumber schooner that's left. If it's gone, all we can show our children and grandchildren is a picture of what a wooden steam schooner used to look like," he said.


Iron men and wooden ships
"I like the fact that it represents an age here on the West Coast of iron men and wooden ships," Patterson said.

"They took these ships up along the Oregon shore and got the trunks of trees down into the ship. Then they brought it down the coast to places like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. A lot of this lumber built the West Coast."

The Sausalito City Council also has taken up the cause. It adopted a resolution Tuesday night that urges Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, to direct the Park Service to use the $1.5 million needed to demolish the ship for its preservation instead.

"All through my childhood the history of the Sausalito waterfront has disappeared because it simply sits there to rot," said Sausalito Vice Mayor George Stratigos.

"What Sausalito needs to do is to take a real proactive stance to preserve its heritage."

The Wapama was part of a fleet of 225 steam schooners built between the 1880s and 1920s to carry lumber and passengers up and down the Pacific Coast. From 1915 to 1930, the Wapama carried more than 1 million board-feet of lumber from the Northwest to San Francisco and points south - lumber that was used to build the cities along the coast.


Carried passengers and cargo
The Wapama later carried passengers between San Francisco and Southern California before being put into service ferrying passengers and cargo between Seattle and Alaska.

She hit a rock in Alaska in 1947, was sold for scrap two years later, and remained in Seattle for almost a decade.

California's Parks Department bought the Wapama in 1957. After extensive renovation, the ship was opened to the public at the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco in 1963. She was transferred to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 1977, and put on a barge in 1980, first in Oakland, and then in Sausalito in 1986.

Bill Thomas, superintendent of the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, which manages six other historic ships near Fisherman's Wharf, said the Parks Department can't afford the estimated $16 million it would take to renovate the Wapama. But he welcomes the public's support in saving the old schooner.

"If somebody can come by and love that ship and make it well, that's wonderful," he said.

Donations to restore the Wapama can be sent to the National Maritime Historical Society, P.O. Box 68, Peekskill, NY 10566.<